Nimble Storage SmartStack for Oracle
with Cisco
Converged Infrastructure Building Blocks for Oracle Software
Today, database administrators and architects realize the importance of storage in
maintaining services levels and staying on budget, especially in the face of rapid growth.
Deploying the right storage solution is critical when utilizing Oracle databases to support
business-critical applications. Database administrators and architects are faced with the
following challenges:
1. Maintaining services levels and staying within budgets, especially in rapid
growth environments
2. Managing costs associated with procuring IT infrastructure
3. Rapidly provisioning more resources to support growing database environments
4. Continuously tuning IT infrastructure to support evolving environments
To address the challenges of both analytic and transactional workloads, Nimble Storage,
along with Cisco, Oracle Linux and Oracle VM, offers a converged infrastructure to deliver
adaptive performance with high availability, capacity savings, efficient data protection, and
improved staff productivity while handling rapid growth. Because of Nimble’s intelligent
flash-based architecture, customers utilizing Nimble Storage solutions for Oracle database
workloads can take advantage of:
Adaptive performance to easily grow performance and/or capacity to scale to the needs
of OLTP and OLAP applications as they grow
Ease of deployment with pre-configured optimizations and performance profiles to
minimize the guesswork of tuning the infrastructure for performance
Integrated data protection and enhanced availability, enabling organizations to take
more frequent backups without disrupting applications, and facilitate quick recovery
with Nimble Storage snapshots
A Better Way Forward
Nimble SmartStackTM for Oracle delivers the ideal converged infrastructure for Oracle
database online transaction processing (OLTP) and online analytical processing (OLAP)
environments with Oracle Linux, in both bare-metal and Oracle VM environments. Whether
deploying Oracle on a single symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) server, on virtual machines
with Oracle VM, or running Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) on multiple nodes,
Nimble Storage SmartStack for Oracle is the perfect solution.
Highlights of the SmartStack Configuration for Oracle
This pre-validated converged infrastructure is based on an Oracle Validated
Configuration that includes Oracle Database and Oracle Linux with the Unbreakable
Enterprise Kernel.
The solution components include a Nimble Storage CS-Series array, two Cisco UCS
B200 M3 blade servers, Oracle Linux 6 Update 4 with the Unbreakable Enterprise
Kernel, and Oracle Database 11g Release 2 or Oracle Database 12c Release 1.
The Nimble Storage CS-Series is certified with Oracle VM 3.2 providing an even more
flexible solution leveraging virtualization for functions such as test and development by
delivering excellent random I/O performance in Oracle VM environments. The Nimble
Storage CS-Series comes with all this rich functionality included, so there are no separate
licenses to buy or hidden services fees.
SmartStack Solution Benefits
Nimble Storage delivers the ideal
platform for supporting Oracle
databases running on Oracle Linux.
Nimble Storage solutions provide:
Adaptive Performance
Get optimal storage performance for
transactional and analytics workloads
that adapts to your business-critical
application needs.
Enhanced Protection and Availability
Enable frequent and fast backup, simple
recovery, and affordable disaster
recovery to meet the needs of storage
teams and DBAs.
Improved Efficiency and Scalability
Spend less time and budget on Oracle
storage, scaling performance and
capacity as your database needs grow.
Simplified Test and Development
Speed up deployments with efficient
developer environments without
needing additional storage or
disrupting production.
Proactive Management
Eliminate the guesswork of tuning Oracle
databases with proactive wellness that
sends remote alerts for system health,
performance, and protection gaps.
The validated design for deployments supporting Oracle databases includes:
Storage
Nimble Storage CS460G-X2 Series array
Compute
Two Cisco UCS B200 M3 blade servers
Two Cisco UCS 6248 Fabric Interconnects
Database
Oracle Database 11g Release 2 or Oracle Database 12c Release 1
Operating System
Oracle Linux 6 x86_64 with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel
Adaptive Performance
Application-Tuned Blocks
Application-Tuned Blocks
Post Compression
SSD (Flash) Cache
Post Compression
The flash-optimized hybrid Nimble Storage CS-Series storage platform is built
on the patented Cache Accelerated Sequential Layout (CASL™) architecture. It
uses a combination of solid state drives (SSD) as a dynamic read cache and a
Sequentially Written
to Disk
write-optimized data layout to deliver excellent random read/write
performance
Sequentially Written to Disk
with sub-millisecond latencies. This makes it ideal for OLTP workloads.
Similarly building on sequential read and write performance of high capacity
disks, it enables powerful analytics using Oracle databases (OLAP) without
requiring a massive datacenter footprint.
SSD (Flash) Cache
Application-Tuned Blocks
Post Compression
Application-Tuned Blocks
Post Compression
Enhanced Protection and Availability
Disks
Disks
Nimble Storage’s flash-optimized hybrid
architecture delivers industry-leading
price performance for transactional and
analytical workloads
Nimble Storage CS-Series integrates data protection through the use of efficient,
instantaneous snapshots. Whether using ASM or a file system such as EXT, the CS-Series
can help protect rapidly growing databases without the complexity of external backup
solutions. IT administrators and DBAs can take frequent consistent backups of their data,
control, and log files simultaneously, eliminating disruptive backup windows for production
databases. Nimble Storage snapshots are instant point-in-time copies that do not copy
any data on future changes (redirect-on-write). In addition, Nimble snapshots share
common data blocks and there is no duplicate data, making them very space efficient.
DBAs can store many months’ worth of frequent backups locally or on a second system,
improving service levels.
Nimble Storage snapshots make recovery simple by enabling DBAs to restore from local or
remote snapshots, or RMAN based back-ups. DBAs can perform a full database recovery,
partial database/logical recovery, or do a point-in-time (System Change Number or time)
recovery quickly and easily. For added protection and disaster recovery, snapshots of the
database, control, and log files can be efficiently replicated (only changed data) to another
CS-Series array.
Scale Performance
Scale Performance
Scale Out
(FUTURE)
Scale Out
(FUTURE)
Improved Efficiency and Scalability
Nimble Storage CS-Series delivers a rich set of efficiency and scalability
features that improve return on investment through datacenter space, power, and
cooling savings, as well as cost avoidance around buying new storage. Nimble Storage
CASL architecture leverages high-capacity disk drives, RAID-6, and compresses (which
enables it to store 30 to 75 percent more data in the same space) all data on the array,
without any impact to performance throughput or latency. Complementing compression is
the use of thin provisioning where storage is only allocated as needed.
The CS-Series provides the ability to scale storage performance and capacity nondisruptively and independently without the upfront investment. For rapidly growing Oracle
environments, this translates to flexibility and higher availability. Scaling storage
performance is as simple as upgrading the controllers, resulting in higher throughput and
Add Cache
and Compute
Add Cache
and Compute
Add Disk
Add Disk
Scale Capacity
Scale Capacity
Independently scale performance and
capacity to accommodate growing
database needs
IOPS. IT admins can scale the cache by upgrading SSDs to accommodate larger amounts
of active data in the database. This enables IT to non-disruptively grow storage capacity by
adding additional disk shelves to scale to hundreds of TB.
Simplified Test and Development
Oracle DBAs can rapidly provision individual developers with their own development
environment, with full functioning clones of the production database—for testing,
development, patching, reporting, training, or quality assurance. This is because the
Nimble Storage CS-Series enables DBAs and application developers to quickly create full
functioning copies or clones of Oracle database volumes including data, control, and log
files, without taking additional space or impacting production databases.
If impact to a production environment with Nimble Storage is a concern, Oracle DBAs can
efficiently replicate full functioning copies of the production databases to another Nimble
Storage array, and use the second array for test and development. Nimble Storage can
also deliver the value of full functioning clones for testing and development in environments
that continue to use their existing non-Nimble SAN infrastructure for production. Oracle
DBAs can leverage Oracle Data Guard to replicate from the primary database on
non-Nimble SAN, to the Nimble Storage array, and then create a full functioning copy on
the Nimble Storage array.
Rapidly provision test and development
environments with zero-copy cloning
The Nimble Storage CS-Series comes with all this rich functionality included, so there are
no separate licenses to buy or hidden services fees.
Proactive Management
Nimble’s application performance policies eliminate the guesswork
of tuning Oracle database. Nimble Storage InfoSight leverages
the power of deep data analytics to proactively optimize storage
arrays for best performance, deliver detailed reporting on capacity,
performance, protection and system health, identify performance
bottlenecks, and enable customers to plan for future needs.
The Bottom Line
Cisco, Oracle, and Nimble Storage have created a validated
solution for Oracle Database 11g Release 2 and Oracle
Database 12c Release 1 on Oracle Linux with the Unbreakable
Enterprise Kernel. The combined solution delivers the performance,
data protection, efficiency, scalability, and test/development
platform that keeps DBAs productive and business-critical
applications running smoothly.
Nimble Storage SmartStack for Oracle with Cisco
For more information, visit www.nimblestorage.com/solutions/oracle
or contact an authorized reseller.
2740 Zanker Road, San Jose, CA 95134
Phone: 408-432-9600; 877-364-6253
Email: info@nimblestorage.com
www.nimblestorage.com
© 2013 Nimble Storage, Inc. Nimble Storage, InfoSight, and CASL are trademarks
or registered trademarks of Nimble Storage, Inc. All other trademarks are the
property of their respective owners. SB-STK-ORCL-0913